Spotify Unveils Top 50 Podcasts of 2025, Led by Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Mel Robbins

Spotify, as part of the annual Spotify Wrapped year-end marketing campaign, released the platform’s top 50 most popular podcasts of 2025 — with Joe Rogan reigning at No. 1 for the fifth straight year.

Increasingly, video is driving podcast engagement on Spotify: Nearly half of the top 50 most-listened to podcasts in 2025 (24 of 50) have video available on the streaming platform, up from about one-third last year.

Spotify’s list of the top 50 podcasts of the year in the U.S. is based on the company’s ranking of shows by unique users who listened to at least two minutes of an episode (or at least 50% of an episode). After “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the most popular podcasts among American users on Spotify in 2025 were “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von”; motivational show “The Mel Robbins Podcast”; interview podcast “Call Her Daddy” hosted by Alex Cooper; and true-crime perennial favorite “Crime Junkie” from Audiochuck. (See the full list of the top 50 podcasts below.)

“When you look at 2025, it really showed that it’s impossible to argue that podcasting is a niche,” said Jordan Newman, head of content partnerships at Spotify. “I don’t think that would be possible without the massive video distribution we’ve had with podcasts.”

SEE ALSO: Spotify Wrapped 2025: Bad Bunny Is the Most-Streamed Global Artist of the Year

The company first launched video podcasts in mid-2020. Time spent with video content on Spotify in 2025 has more than doubled year-over-year, largely driven by video podcasts. More than 390 million users have now streamed a video podcast on the platform, up 54% year-over-year.

Spotify’s video podcast library now includes nearly 500,000 shows; overall, the platform hosts nearly 7 million podcast titles. And more are being added on a regular basis: As of Dec. 1, “The Shawn Ryan Show” (No. 6 for 2025) now has video available on Spotify.

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The rise of video podcasts also has fueled the category on YouTube, which earlier this year said more than 1 billion people monthly watch podcasts on the platform.

According to Spotify’s Newman, video has been the key ingredient that has made podcast moments go “super viral,” such as the March 2025 episode of Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” that featured her former “Saturday Night Live” castmate Tina Fey as a guest. “It allows for some emotional resonance that wouldn’t be possible without video,” he said. “You can build a deeper relationship with the host on video.” And, Newman said, “There’s a growing expectation that there will be a video component with a podcast.”

Meanwhile, in October, Spotify announced a deal with Netflix to stream a collection of original podcasts on Netflix worldwide, beginning in the U.S. — a pact that wouldn’t be possible if those shows didn’t have video. Spotify video podcasts set to come to Netflix on a nonexclusive basis starting in 2026 include “The Bill Simmons Podcast” sports and pop-culture interview series, “The Rewatchables” show that delves into classic films, and true-crime series “Serial Killers.”

That said, there are still millions of audio-only podcasts on Spotify that attract significant audiences. “The barriers to entry are really low” in podcasting, Newman said. “There are highly produced podcasts, but there are some really scrappy podcasts that got their start using iPhones. It doesn’t need to be a huge, expensive setup.”

Top 50 Podcasts on Spotify in the U.S. for 2025

Note: Asterisks denote podcasts that distribute video episodes on Spotify